Lydia stood in front of the house and looked at it with open skepticism. Could it really be true that for $850 she now owned an entire piece of property? In the city, that kind of money wouldn’t even cover a room for long, and yet here sat a whole house.
Sure, it was old. Sure, it was out in the middle of nowhere. But it was hers. A place of her own. She pushed open the wooden gate. It squealed so loudly that crows burst up from the neighboring yard.
Lydia flinched, then made herself keep walking. The yard was waist-high with weeds. Thick grass, nettles, burrs—everything had grown wild and tangled.
An old apple tree with a twisted trunk stood alone in the middle of it all, dropping rotten fruit onto the ground. The shed leaned so badly it looked ready to collapse. Its roof had caved in, boards stuck out at odd angles, but the house itself looked surprisingly solid.
The logs had gone dark with age and rain, but they were tight and sound. The foundation hadn’t sunk. The roof was still intact, though thick with moss. The windows were boarded over with heavy planks.
One shutter had a large rusted padlock hanging from it. Lydia climbed the porch steps slowly. The boards bent under her weight in a way she didn’t love, but they held.
She took the key from her pocket. It was big and old-fashioned, with an ornate head. The real estate agent in the county seat had handed it to her along with the signed sale papers.
He had been oddly quiet when she asked about the house. He’d only said that if she wanted it, she should take it, and added that no one had lived there in three or four years. When she asked why, he said the previous owner had died.
There were no close relatives to claim the place, so it had gone to the county. They had tried to sell it several times, but every buyer backed out. When Lydia asked why, the agent had only shrugged and looked away.
He said the place was remote and the roads were bad. Young people had moved away, he added, and nobody wanted an old house that far out. But for Lydia, it was exactly what she needed.
After a hard divorce, she had been left with almost nothing. The apartment had gone to her ex-husband in the settlement. She didn’t have steady work, and her modest savings were disappearing fast.
That $1,800 was everything she had managed to save over two years, piecing together odd jobs and temporary work. And when she saw the listing for this house at that price, she knew it was her last real shot. Lydia pushed the key into the lock with effort…
